


T.O.U.C.H.

by SmilinStar



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Ward x Simmons Ship Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 21:30:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1241428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmilinStar/pseuds/SmilinStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What makes you think your life is worth any less than mine?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	T.O.U.C.H.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Ward/Simmons Ship Week, based on the theme ‘Touch’.

 

_“ **T** o be quite frank, I’m disappointed in you.”_

-

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her this angry. 

He’s been here, in this position, many times before. It’s almost turned into a running joke between them the number of times he’s been grazed by bullets and met the wrong end of a knife. She always berates him, rolls her eyes in mock exasperation and tells him she’s going to let him bleed to death the next time he comes into her lab looking like someone’s target practice.

Of course, it’s hard to take her seriously when she always watches him leave with an open smile on her face. It’s the warmth in those smiles he appreciates the most, but he never lets his thoughts dwell on just why that is.

Today is different though.

She can barely look him in the eyes. Her focus is intently on piercing his skin with that needle and suture, threading it through. In and out. If she skimped on the 1% lidocaine, and he’s having to grit his teeth just that little bit harder with every stitch, he doesn’t complain and she doesn’t admit to it.

The stony silence hammers away inside his skull.

Having worked alone for so long, he would have thought he’d be used to it. Comfortable with it. Even happy with it. Happy to have some semblance of what his life was like before he’d been forced on to this Bus and made to play nice with a team of people he didn’t know and ordinarily never would have cared to know.

Funny how fast things change.

“I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t say anything and her head stays down. She reaches over to the side and picks up the dressing and not so gently presses it over his wound and tapes it down. He barely manages to hold on to the hiss of pain. 

He sees her visibly flinch and he knows it goes against her baser instinct to inflict pain or be unmoved by it, but she’s angry and hurt, and on some level he understands why.

Had the roles been reversed, he imagines he would have felt exactly the same way. Only difference being, he could never stay angry at Jemma Simmons long.

She steps away from him, turns around and busies herself with tidying away the blood soaked swabs and peeling off her no longer sterile gloves. It is a silent dismissal. One he probably shouldn’t fight, but he can’t help himself.

“Jemma-”

She spins around so fast, he thinks she may have given herself whiplash. She stares him down, her eyes burning, cheeks flushed. He’s ready for an onslaught, a tongue lashing, but her voice comes out surprisingly restrained,

“What makes you think your life is worth any less than mine?”

He doesn’t have an answer, and can only stare mutely up at her from his seat.

He’s never had anyone care, to make him believe he was worth anything, worth saving.

Something in his expression gives him away and her face softens almost instantly, “Just next time, please …”

“I’ll be more careful.”

The small grateful smile she gives him then, touches him in the most unexpected of ways. He ignores the warmth blooming in his chest and simply smiles back at her.

 

*****

_“ **O** h, of course you’d take his side!”_

-

“You’re supposed to be impartial!”

“I am!”

“You are the worst umpire in the history of forever!”

“Oh for goodness sake Fitz, could you be any more of a drama queen!”

Ward really can do nothing to stop the short chuckle from leaving his mouth as he effortlessly spins the racket around in his hand. Fitz’s face at that precise moment is a picture. He is scowling like a petulant child and the glare on his face only makes him laugh harder.

Simmons turns her head in his direction and huffs, “Not helping Grant.”

He sobers a little and holds up his racket, pointing over the net, “It was clearly in. It’s not my fault he has the hand-eye coordination of a toddler.”

“Hey! It’s guys like you that made me quit the football team!”

He can see from the corner of his eyes that Simmons is trying very hard not to start laughing at him. It’s really quite admirable the way she’s managed to keep a straight face and for the most part she’s done a decent job of umpiring this impromptu tennis match fairly.

She lets her professionalism slip just a fraction though when she says, “No, if I remember rightly, you quit because you scored two own goals in one match and you barely managed to escape the rest of the team with your face in tact.”

“Jemma!”

She shrugs, “I’m sorry, but it’s true.” She turns to look at him, “It really was quite funny in a kind of I can’t bear to look, this is a car crash waiting to happen, second hand embarrassment, kind of way.”

“Can we bring this back to this match please, because it was clearly out, ergo it should be deuce.”

“It touched the line!”

“You’re getting blind in your old age Ward! It was smack bang in the middle of the tramlines!”

“Okay fine!” she finally snaps, “Replay the point, and replay it without me!”

“You can’t go!” he says and it sounds surprisingly like a whine. She raises her eyebrow at him and he clears his throat and tries again, “I mean we clearly can’t finish this match without someone making sure it’s fair.”

Truth be told, he’s getting a bit of a kick out of thrashing Fitz on the court, and maybe he’s (just a little bit) showing off, and he thinks half the fun will disappear with her.

“Yes, I know,” she agrees, “so that’s why I’m sending in Sneezy. He can be your very own Hawkeye!”

She seems quite proud of herself with that idea and even Fitz is impressed.

“Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?!”

He can’t really argue but he’s helpless to stop the scowl from forming on his face.

Never mind.

*****

_“ **U** seless piece of junk!”_

-

“Hey.”

“It’s not working!”

“Jemma.”

“NO! It should have worked! The stupid thing wasn’t calibrated properly and it’s messed up the entire formula and now I have to start all over again! Damn it Fitz, I told you to keep your bloody electromagnets away from my spectrometer, look what you’ve gone and done!”

Skye swallows down her next attempt to try and calm the biochemist down. She shares a quick glance with Fitz, who’s standing in the far corner. He looks just as dejected as she does and she knows he knows not to take Simmon’s words to heart, but it’s hard not to when watching someone you care about break apart from the inside out.

“He’s going to be-”

“Don’t.” She snaps the word, and her next intake of breath is harsh and ragged, “Don’t tell me he’s going to be fine. Don’t tell me I’ll figure this thing out. Just don’t.”

She can see the desperation on her friend’s face and its killing her that she can’t do anything to help. Not even stand there and be a solid rock of support. Her words mean nothing, her hacking skills are of no use, and she can’t even keep her own tears in check. 

She watches as Simmons puts the helmet of her hazmat suit back on and her gloved hands grab hold of another blood tube, needle and syringe. She walks out of the lab and they can only stand there and watch the big screen in front of them.

They’ve put him in the room that up until this point had only ever kept their enemies hostage. Now, they had one of their own locked up in there, quarantined away from everybody else.

They’re not sure how or when he became infected, but when he started bleeding from his nail beds, they knew it couldn’t be good.

Skye can only watch on as her friend grabs hold of Ward’s left arm and ties the tourniquet around it.

She notices him come around before Jemma does.

He reaches out and places a hand over her gloved one.

Feverishly hot bare skin on cold, impersonal latex.

The look on their faces is enough to break her heart.

They were supposed to get more time.

*****

_“ **C** an you please put that down, and pay attention?!”_

-

“Were you serious about wanting to learn how to do this or not?”

His lips move to say yes, but his entire face is lying.

She watches as he reluctantly puts the bowl of melted chocolate he’d been hugging to his chest down on the counter, but his fingers are still hovering close. She knows he wants to dip his fingers into it. She knows because she wants to as well.

She knows he’s doing it on purpose, and the way he’s watching her makes her think he just wants to see her reaction. Truth be told it’s just a little bit thrilling feeling his eyes on her constantly, especially with that grin playing at his lips. She does her best to ignore him and the rising blush on her cheeks.

“So I usually mix in the eggs slowly, a little at a time, otherwise the mixture just sort of-”

She drifts off in the middle of her sentence when she feels him step in close to her side. When he reaches out and gently swipes a thumb across her cheek, she’s pretty sure she’s stopped breathing.

Voice low, he says, “Sorry, you just had a bit of flour there.”

She feels her cheeks burning but she can’t help the smile that widens on her face and the laugh that leaves her lips. She turns up to look at him, and only laughs a little harder when she sees the confusion on his face.

“Really?” she says, “That’s the best you can come up with?”

He is so terrible at this and the complete opposite of smooth, and it’s just a tiny bit adorable.

He looks a little put out when he answers back with, “You really did have flour on your cheek.”

She shakes her head, steps in closer and reaching on to her tip toes, she leaves a lingering kiss on his cheek.

He looks back at her, and she thinks he looks just slightly stunned and breathless.

She reins back her face splitting grin and puts on an air of being completely unaffected, “Can you pass me the chocolate please?”

Turnabout is fair play, after all.

*****

_“ **H** ave you ever thought about what you’d be doing if this wasn’t your life?”_

-

He’s too busy trailing kisses down her throat to pay any attention to her questions. She’s not complaining, but she genuinely wants to know.

“Grant?” she says, turning on to her side so he has no choice to stop what he’s doing and look down at her.

He sighs but it has no bite, “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

She absently runs a finger down his chest and cocks her head to the side, “Never?”

He doesn’t say anything, just drops down on to the pillow beside her and stares up at the ceiling. He’s quiet for a while and she just patiently waits for him to gather his thoughts.

“I’d probably still be fighting to get myself out from under my brother’s shadow. Either trying and failing not to get dragged down with him, or constantly running and looking back over my shoulder.”

He never really says anything about his family and she never pushes. His answer doesn’t really surprise her though. He may never say anything but she knows just how much his childhood still plays on his mind and how much it has shaped who he is.

He hasn’t finished though, and his next sentence makes her heart ache;

“I don’t think I would have amounted to much if S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t recruited me.”

She shifts up and props herself up on to her elbow. Her free hand reaches over, and running her fingers over his freshly shaven jaw line she gently turns his face around to look at her.

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

She smiles softly at him and silently urges him to see what she sees. Her hair is loose and falls down around her shoulders, it skims his cheek but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“What about you?”

“Academia most likely. I imagine I’d be teaching at Cambridge. I’d enjoy it I’m sure, but I think I would have always felt like something was missing.”

He threads his fingers through her hair and curls some of it away behind her ear. “Me?” he asks with a teasing grin.

She laughs, “Everything.”

He knows exactly what she means. Guiding her head down he brushes a kiss on her forehead. She settles her head down on his chest, and his arm comes around to hold her against him.

“Well I’m glad we’re here and not there.”

She turns her face, letting her lips touch his chest and places a feathery light kiss over his heart. He responds in kind with a smile into her skin.

“Me too.”

 


End file.
